Q- Environment

Jul 28, 2015

“We
have Process definition, Tool with problem management enabled & Data
related to Incidents and also Incident Resolution Categorization information
though it’s not 100%, we still can go ahead and use” Rajeev says.

“Criteria’s
are also well established” Raghu adds.

“We
have identified Problem Analysts from each service delivery groups and also
training has been provided to all” Narasimha points out.

“We
should have dedicated team as we have for change management and dedicated team
on defined frequency should perform trending using statistical tools” Agastya
says and continues “Unless and until we have dedicated team and members
awareness on the concept, we will not be able to achieve the required outputs”

“Agree
as discussed with you Agastya, we will identify team & members to perform
the problem management activities” Madhu Raj clarifies.

“There
are many freeware tools available which can be interfaced with our ticketing
tool; the analytic tools will help in Data analysis, discovery &
visualization and provides insight view on the incident trends which will help
us in identifying the focus areas” Narasimha explains.

“Till
today; we have not put our focused effort on problem management, to provide
value and to gain client’s confidence in terms of service delivery we should
focus on proactive management” Prashanth Says.

“We
have identified what needs to be done and we know the challenges, issues and
also more importantly now, we have common understanding on the concept &
practice so it’s better late than never, let’s kick start” Prashanth says with
excitement.

“To
answer Praveen point on problem management brings breakthrough; yes it might in
the culture and Problem Management will mainly help in providing permanent
solution to the incidents which are reoccurring which will gradually reduce
incidents with respect to applications & infrastructure there by hardening/stabilizing
the applications, minimizes failures & business impact and also helps in
achieving better first time fix rates; Finally practice or culture establishes
client confidence in our service delivery there by business growth” Agastya
explains in detail.

“Absolutely,
we got to show progress towards Reactive to Proactive and Corrective to
Perfective” Madhu Raj Concludes.

“The
challenges faced are many; firstly, buy in from members and management due to
lack of understanding on the concept” Agastya starts to explain.

“Agree;
but since you and your team have given us trainings & also shared knowledge
on the concepts in almost all the meeting so it should not be an issue now”
Narasimha clarifies.

“We
will have Class Based trainings for all members and also we can come up with
E-learnings on problem management. Sure, this will be taken care” Prashanth
assures Agastya.

“Secondly,
Tool issues” Agastya says.

“Previous
ticketing tool did not have problem management module opened for our account but
now the module is accessible so we will go ahead and use it” Raghu adds.

“I
remember this guy & his team used to torture us to extract all incidents
and to classify all the incidents manually” Rajeev says.

“I
understand the pain but that was the only option we had; we wanted to initiate
& imbed problem management practice in to our account & also to
members” Agastya provides explanations.

“True
if we have supported you then till now we would have had practice institulized
across account” Narasimha adds.

“Very
true, we wouldn’t have this brainstorming session” Rajeev says as everyone
bursts in to laugh.

“Manual
effort of going back to each incident which are closed and looking in to work
logs/journals to understand the issue and workarounds/temporary solution
provide was very huge and many members were not willing to perform this
activity” Agastya explains.

“And
also challenge was member who had worked on the incident was not the one who
was classifying so it took lot of time for the member to understand the
incident & its resolution steps, Which added more manual effort” Narasimha
points out.

“To
overcome discussed challenges we worked with onshore team & client; Problem
management module has been opened in new ticketing tool and also Resolution
Categorization section” Agastya explains.

“We
have started using the problem management module but still way to go on how
& what, criteria and systematic usage of the module” Praveen says.

“I
know that few service delivery groups are using the module but the criteria
used to open problem ticket is not right, we should align and have common
understanding on problem management practice across account” Agastya says.

“Problem
Management process is already defined, we need to get educated on the process
& also need to educate team members on the practices” Madhu Raj points out
as he joins the conversation.

“True,
that Incident classification is not to identify problems but rather guide
workflow” Nikhil adds.

“Googled;
CTI is a three-tiered approach of defining "Category," a
"Type" associated with the "Category," and an
"Item" associated with the "Type." One popular approach
suggests that Category and Type be "nouns," and Item be a "verb."
Supreeth reads from google page.

“Too
generic, can you explain bit details with example?” Rajeev asks.

“We
can’t achieve 100% correct classification using any method but overall CTI
classification is proven one; to give simple example, if Incident is related to
Database then Category will be Database, then Type will be Oracle and item will
be Up-gradation of oracle in simple terms Upgrade” Agastya explains with simple
example.

“Oh
that’s easy” Rajeev mutters and everyone nods.

“Oh
really; it took us 4 months for us to follow up with teams to get CTI
classifications for respective delivery groups” Agastya says with little
hesitations.

“Did
you get the information as per your expectations?” Madhu Raj questions.

“The
classifications needs to be done with respect to each applications and what we
have done now is at delivery group level, which is not the perfect solution and
more ever the classifications were not effectively done” Agastya answers.

“Application
level classifications” Rajeev asks.

“Yes,
when you select CI in ticketing tool; the Three Tier classification should pop
up with respect to CI” Agastya clarifies.

“You
mean to say, we should have classifications that to 3 level with respect to all
the 100+ applications we have in our group?” Praveen Gaur asks.

“Yes,
that’s correct. Classification should be mapped to CI/Applications but in
current scenario we have mapped it with Delivery groups which is not the
perfect thing to do” Agastya explains.

“It
would be very difficult to map classifications to CI considering the number of
applications we support” Praveen says.

“The
challenge is always there; thought let’s start at some point and make member to
update the available resolution categorization whenever they are resolving
& closing the incident which will save manual effort of classifying the
incident later point of time and also as Narasimha pointed out, the person who
resolved will identify the resolution categorization which will also reduce the
effort of revisiting the work logs/journals” Agastya exhales.

“Very
good and there is always a room for improvement; Classification mapping to CI
can be done as we progress” Madhu raj adds.

“What
about Operational categorization; why don’t we use that instead of Resolution
categorization” Rajeev asks as he looks confused.

“Operational
categorization is updated by the helpdesk and during their conversation with
user, only certain information will be gathered and sometime it might be
sufficient and sometime it might not be; so with the available info they will
classify the incidents in operational section” Narasimha explains.

“The
classification might be correct but during resolution of incident members who
resolves incident will find out whether it is related to application, database
or network and it gives an opportunity for the members to validate the
classification provided by the helpdesk and the actual resolution
categorization” Sujan adds more points.

“Also,
we can do feasibility study or analysis or comparison of Operation and
resolution categorization which will state the effectiveness of helpdesk
classification and the interference information can also help helpdesk team to
go back & identify the missing or focus areas, in turn helpdesk team can
work towards effective classification” Nikhil adds.

“One
thing which we missed is, Know Error data base; once we start implementing the
practice we have to focus on prepare knowledge articles which should be used by
the support members to resolve incidents as quickly as possible” Nikhil says.

“Prabhu
..Srinivas, Let us understand his point of view and thought process on problem
management” Narasimha Murthy says to Srinivas.

“Problem
Management is always a gray area in our account” Adds Prashanth Tandon.

“Poor
guy Agastya, he is behind us to implement problem management practice from past
2 to 3 years; let’s understand the intent of it first” Rajeev says.

“In
a recent Gartner document (Improving IT Service Support with Incident and
Problem Management Integration), it states that only 20% of organizations
surveyed have well-integrated Incident
& Problem Management from a people, process and technology
perspective” Agastya says and continues “our organization is in the same group
as the other 80% of the companies in this Gartner survey”

“Objective
of incident is to restore service as quickly as possible, right” Agastya ask
everyone in the room.

“Right”
Everyone nods head with cheerful voice.

“Incident
ends when user is able to carry on with their job regardless whether or not the
cause is identified and resolved; right” Agastya asks again.

“Right”
once again loud voice was heard and few heads nodding to right n left side.

Nikhil
pitches in and says “Problem Management deals with solving the underlying cause
of one or more incidents; therefore, the emphasis of Problem Management is to
resolve the root cause and to find permanent solutions”

“”One
or more incidents”, perfect definition” Agastya says with smile.

Always
thought, why are we sticking to age old concept; Why are we not coming up with
interesting thought/concept, which will tickle readers brain while reading & conveys message with less effort.

The
Approach paper on Business Growth is my experiment output of new thought
process;

“We
need to think strategically” Prashanth, the group director says to Rajeev.

“Reducing
Overheads and Juniorization are the only way to increase our profit margin?”
Rajeev Narayan, the delivery manager says.

“Productivity
improvement” Narasimha who was standing behind, pitches his thoughts.

Agastya
Raj, the quality manager walked over to join the conversation after hearing
Rajeev supersonic voice.

“Those
are internal strategies but those will take sweet time to show value to add to
clients” Aravind Krishnan explains and continues “ There are many competitors
waiting outside the door; if we don’t barge in sweetly then there is chance of
losing contract in near term”

“Nothing
left to think as you excluded all possibilities” Srinivas Prabhu, delivery
manager adds as he joins the discussion.

“Apart
from all the above stated, if you want me to state then it would be Business
Growth” Sujan Reddy who completed PMP recently adds as he wanted to prove his
capability badly.

“Here
comes PMP !!” Nikhil Prasad mutters.

“Organic
growth will happen when the client is happy with our service delivery” As
Rajeev says, he looks at Agastya.

“Let’s
not worry about too many things; we should be more worried about our account
and how we optimize cost and make customer happy which will eventually bring in
more business there by profit to our BU” Agastya says and looks in to all the
curious faces.

“Let’s
not wait for something bad to happen; proactively we will do something to make
customer happy first” Sujan being a PMP certified recently puts his views.

“Hmm….what
is Something PMP …what is the value we can provide to business or client which
will make them happy apart from effective on-time and defect free delivery?”
Amit sathe questions all.

Everyone
jaws slipped and all were more curious to know who will answer.

“Application
consolidation” Agastya says.

“What?
Application consolidation; what it means?” Rajeev asks with surprise.

“The
only way we can improve our organic growth is by reducing cost of IT to client
and providing value which will lead business growth” Sujan clarifies.

“How
are we going to do it” Amit sathe asks.

“Is
it same consolidation concept which is happening in all the major companies?”
Teja asks.

“Agastya,
are you talking about server consolidation or Application consolidation?”
Prashanth asks.

“Both
may be; as far as our account is concerned we should be more worried about the
application consolidation but if we do both Server and Infra consolidation then
it would have far more benefits” Agastya says as he looks in to Prashanth eyes.

“My
point is, since we are supporting client on AM & infra; we should look in
to both” Prashanth tenders his thoughts.

Sujan
pitches in and says “As I was preparing for PMP; I read few articles on
application consolidation and they state that application consolidation will be
incremental & more difficult than the server/infra consolidation”

“Sujan, I also read one of the articles by Michael Biddick. He says “In terms of
business justification, the case for consolidating apps is one of the easiest
to make but the hardest to implement. Every application has a loyal
constituency of users adamant about not losing the perceived unique
capabilities of (and their comfort level with) their app of choice. App
consolidation often becomes a political nightmare that scares IT away from
forcing tough choices”” Aravind Adds.

“Hello
smarty’s, still I am not clear on consolidation concept. At least give me
overview and how are we going to benefit” Rajeev pleads.

“Platinum
is long term, Gold is Mid-term and Silver is Short-term. Silver apps can be
identified which are not used & no users, can be terminated with little
analysis on the impact” Narasimha pitches to the ring with his inputs.

“In
few cases like our HR tool; old applications are retained even though new ones
are implemented just because of having access to historic data” Prashanth tells
with surprise on his face for which everyone nods there head.

“Gold
apps can be identified which has redundant functionalities” Sujan adds.

“Finally,
platinum apps are more related to business process reengineering aspects like
optimization, redesigning the architecture” Rajeev says with full confidence.

“Guess
we need business approval to drive this initiative” Praveen says.

“Of
course, this kind of strategic decision should be taken by our management in
coordination with Business IT people” Sujan adds.

“Each
application exchange may require changes in working processes, and thereby
training and communication for the affected users. These are like joint
ventures; to be driven client business & IT support” Teja adds and Vikram
who is account manager joins the conversation.

“Guys,
before going to management we should come up with solid framework, systematic
approach and metadata which will help us in convincing management on this
drive” Rajeev says as he gets in to the nerves of the discussion.

“Agastya is the right person to suggest us
what need to be done” Sujan says.

“Little
easier for our account as we have application information readily available and
we have already portfolio grouping for each application based on Line of
service, type & usability of the application” Vikram suggests.

“And
also, we have clear cut information on the upstream & downstream
applications in SLA pdf document, info related apps architecture - technical
and infra environment & user info in production guides or in Wikipedia or
we can also look at the KM App map” Agastya adds to Vikram statement.

“So,
you are saying; we should start with detailed analysis may be gap
analysis/assessment, second Information gathering and third implementation”
Rajeev concludes.

“Challenges,
constraints and dependencies will always be there in all the organization or in
accounts or in projects and with this kind of initiative there will be but to
we got to ensure to identify challenges & constraints in the early stage
during gap analysis with required mitigation plans” Vikram gives his best
speech of his life and all were able to feel the heat.

“Let’s
start and prepare proposal to management on the application consolidation”
Rajeev says and everyone nods with full josh.

“As
I stated earlier; it’s not easy as we put forth out thoughts but it is not
impossible at all and this is the only way to gain customer confidence and
loyalty which might bring in business” Agastya adds.